The Valley of Eyes Unseen 8 – Collins · Library Across
Literature · Adventure
The Valley of Eyes Unseen 8Storm and Peril and Stress
18
Literature · Adventure
The Valley of Eyes Unseen 8
Storm and Peril and Stress
CollinsEnglish
We began our land journey in high spirits. Whatever perils nature might be holding up her sleeve, our human enemies were left far behind; and it wasn't till now that I realised fully the racking strain of suspense we had undergone since we fled for our lives out of Shanghai. Good was it, too, as we advanced in file, to look back over our shoulders at the sturdy bearers and the wiry hill-ponies that carried the outfit for our expedition. But most satisfactory of all was the thought that we were travelling with Saunders Philipson. Poyning and I had now reached the pitch of confidence when a man believes in his leader's ultimate success as a certainty. The Chinese servants had known Philipson longer than we, and their trust in him seemed by that much the more implicit. Even the native bearers, after a few days of the master who seemed to know their wants so well and speak their language so fluently and pick out their small shirkings with such intimate comprehension, were beginning to fall under the magic of his radiant personality.
The third night out, we pitched camp and dined in the nearest approach to elegance we were to know for many a long day. Lo Eng excelled himself in the kitchen--we hadn't yet reached the period of canned foods--and Philipson produced three bottles of red wine which he called upon us to help him empty.
'Let us clean it up,' he cried. 'We cannot count on re-stocking the bins for many months--which will fall upon me, at least, with grave hardship--but it will be merely teasing ourselves to make these bottles spin out for a day or two. Besides which, corked wine is never nice. Come, let us pledge success to our journey in a good deep pull!'
It sticks in my mind very clear, that scene round the camp fire. Behind us rose great hills of red rock, now deepened by the failing light to a crimson as dark as the wine of our toast, and sweeping away in majestic ranks on either side of the pass through which we should work westward. The natives were squatting round their fire a little way off, cooking their evening meal and, I'm afraid, burning slips of joss-paper to scare off evil spirits of the hills; while the ponies, picketed at some distance beyond the bearers, were pulling contentedly at the scant grass of the highlands. Beside the tarpaulin that served us for tablecloth, Poyning, with a quaint hint of dandyism in his rough mountaineering rig, sat puffing at one of his carefully hoarded cigarettes through a dapper little ivory and amber holder. At this time he still possessed his eyeglass, though I fancy it subsequently went the way of so much more gear that we scattered along that desperate trail. Philipson, who never smoked except to sustain some native guise, was leaning forward, the light of the fire leaping over his clean-chiselled features; and as he laid down his aluminium wine cup after pledging a swift and successful trek to us all, he began to speak.
'Listen to me, you fellows,' he said earnestly. 'This is going to be the biggest adventure any man here has ever undertaken. It will also be the most dangerous. The journey to the obo alone is severe enough, and what lies beyond that, God knows, though from what I remember of the look of the mountains it will be far more difficult than anything this side. But if you follow me heart and soul, I believe I can lead you over to the valley beyond. Trust me as you would trust the eternal truths of life, and I shall not fail you. I know I can carry it through!'
His voice rang, his eyes gleamed, his hands clutched and unclutched, and altogether Saunders Philipson looked like a man inspired--which, for my part, I fully believe he was.
A moment later he was pouring out the last of the claret with a calm judicial air. 'Do not be alarmed if I have my dramatic moods,' he said. 'I should not speak as I do unless I felt the truth of every word I say. Now you had better turn in, for I am going to work you hard to-morrow. Let me give you this advice at the starting out: never be afraid of a long march. My experience of these mountains tells me that the man who gets through is he who makes a dash for it. It is like a bayonet charge over open country--the quicker you cross, the safer.'
We made the long stage he foretold, and several longer after that. Hour upon hour, hour upon hour we rode up precipitous gullies and down seemingly impossible ravines, but always drew higher in the long run. The mere exertion of sitting our ponies was tremendous. I soon came to realise that never before, in a life that would be reckoned abnormally strenuous, had I really known what fatigue meant, and Poyning was worse off than I; but weariness never seemed to show itself on Philipson. At the first sign of flagging anywhere, he was to hand, helping or exhorting or bullying as the case appeared to him to demand, and getting us on the move again when you would have said flesh and blood could endure no more. His genius for organisation was no whit inferior to his energy, and his sense of country more astonishing than either. Time and again, when we had come to a sheer blind alley in the mountains and were at the end of our strength, Philipson divined a way out, found the necessary pass himself by searching on foot, and brought us safe over. The distances we travelled in a day were incredible. On one occasion we must have covered forty-five miles between sunrise and sundown, and that over some of the roughest and steepest country we had yet struck. Before the end of this stage Poyning was in a collapse, so weary that he could no longer keep his saddle; whereupon Philipson dismounted and walked beside him, holding the boy up, and for the last mile more than half carrying him in his arms. Yet I noticed it was Saunders Philipson who did most of the work in camp that night--the bearers themselves were dead beat--and that Philipson was first up in the morning, field glass in hand, scouring the mountainside for the easiest route. I couldn't help reflecting what a magnificent leader in war this man would have made. Good troops would have followed him to the very ends of the earth.
I soon saw, too, the wisdom of his policy of taking mountain ranges at a run, for here we were, with the summer still before us, and the first great barrier range behind. The country began to descend, the going was easier and faster, and after a few days' march down a long slant we came within view of our first big landmark. I heard the bearers raise a shout and saw them throw out their arms, pointing. There, still far ahead, was a curious bluey shimmer on the rough yellow face of the earth. Philipson was scanning this through the glasses.
'What do you make of it, Mirlees?' he cried.
'It ought to be the head waters of the Yellow River,' I replied.
'Right. Or rather, the upper waters. The actual sources are about seven days farther on. When we reach them I can promise you a breather of three whole days.'
All fell out as he foretold. We encamped beside the Hsing Hai, or "Starry Lakes," which, rising out of springs in the plain, form the beginnings of that mighty flood known many hundreds of miles farther east as China's Sorrow. Plain the country is called by courtesy only, for it stands at a level higher than the highest peaks of Great Britain, and can be conceived as a plain only by contrast with the great mountain ranges to north and south. Here we rested three days. To me, at least, the time was one of delight; it had long been my ambition to explore the source of the most lawless river in the world; my notebook was almost a fixture on my knee, and I reflected that if the expedition brought nothing else, it would at any rate enable me to offer the geographers a few hard facts in place of the mess of theory and surmise-at-a-distance that makes up our knowledge of this region.
Poyning spent most of the three days asleep, while Philipson was busy with Lo Eng overhauling stores and looking for fresh bearers. The men of Kiai had only contracted to come this far, but partly by enhanced rewards and partly by a judicious blend of threat and blandishment Philipson prevailed on them to stay with us until relieved. The new company, of ten men, we raised at length from a wretched hamlet on the foothills southward of the lakes. They were tagliks (hillmen) of indeterminate race and small prepossession, and they hadn't been with us long before they gave us ample reason to regret the sturdy Ssuchuanese whose place they had taken.
At dawn on the fourth day we struck out westward again, at the best pace we could make. Speed was vital, in fact, for we should soon be at heights where the "hot" weather nights are arctic and winter allows nothing human to live. It was Philipson's purpose to hold on this course until we cut across the route of his former journey, then to work by means of his maps to the obo among the mountains. Before we had travelled many days the country was rising sharply again, its aspect changing from hour to hour. The scattered tamarisks of the plateau were left far behind, now nothing grew to soften the staring nakedness of red sandstone and green slate but here and there a patch of wiry, bleached grass, out of which the ponies could get but a meagre supplement to the limited fodder we carried. Now and again we sighted the beautiful yellow-brown wild ass, sometimes the fleeting form of some type of antelope, while at night we were glad of our camp fire not only for its warmth, but also for the protection it gave us against the wolves we heard howling hungrily around us. Gradually, however, as we drew higher and higher, even these signs of life dropped out of the vast desolation, and we saw nothing but an occasional herd of yak, the wild bull of Tibet.
This creature is one of the riddles of the animal kingdom. While of a size and strength and savagery that would enable him to hold his own in a lion country, he yet elects for some unfathomed reason to herd far up the steeps of these Tibetan mountain ranges, where no other animal barring polar bears and arctic foxes could live to dispute with him the stunted pasture I have already mentioned. He is coated with long wool which sweeps the ground on either side of his magnificent trunk, and lives through the coldest winter at an altitude where even the summer nights bring with them a temperature well below zero Fahrenheit. I have dwelt on the queer habits of the yak because it was in our encounter with one of the species that Saunders Philipson showed himself in a light that almost set me wondering whether he was mortal man like the rest of us. It was more than amazing. It was uncanny.
Uncertain as we were whether our canned stuff would last out the trip, we were constantly on the alert for a chance to supplement it with game of the country; and when we sighted a fine herd of yak at feed plumb in the middle of our path one day, we decided to halt the caravan and try a shot. Yak beef, I may remark, is a good deal better than pony-steak, and in those cold dry altitudes will keep indefinitely.
There was no cover within close range of the herd, nor was there need of any: the yak continued to feed after observing us, as if totally indifferent to our approach, and I make no doubt they had never seen human beings before. I had loaded my .45 and was edging nearer, with Philipson and Poyning on my heels.
'Careful aim, Mirlees,' whispered Philipson to me. 'Those brutes are not usually dangerous till they are wounded. You know where to put your shot?'
'Just behind the shoulder is best, isn't it?'
'The only place. As for the bony parts, you might as well loose off into a concrete wall. Now is your chance.'
I picked out a magnificent bull standing broadside on to us, and fired at about fifty yards. The beast threw up its head with a snort of wrath, but didn't appear to be wounded dangerously, let alone mortally. Philipson snatched the rifle from my hand, loaded and fired again, but it was too late. The herd, ten or eleven in number, had seen where the attack came from. They put down their heads and charged. I yelled to the bearers for more rifles, but the bearers had dropped everything and scattered, leaving the ponies to stampede in terror with all our gear.
There was nothing for it now but to stampede ourselves, which we did, heading instinctively for the shelter of a great boulder at some distance from the spot where I had fired. Poyning and I reached it abreast, but as I glanced back over my shoulder I saw to my horror that Philipson hadn't followed. He stood out in the open, rifle in hand, loading and firing rapidly, it is true, but with no more precipitation than if he had been at the butts.
'Good God!' yelled Poyning. 'The man will be trampled flat!'
In an instant he had wheeled and dashed back, waving his arms and shouting, as if in a wild hope to stem that terrible charge. He might as well have shouted at a typhoon of the China seas. Philipson continued to fire. He must have got in three shots before the rush drew near, and the main herd swerved and went wide; but the wounded bull came on alone, bellowing with fury. He was within ten yards of Philipson when a shot took him between the forelegs, and I could see that at last he was checked. The great brute swung to the right, straight at Poyning, who leapt aside but stumbled in the doing and fell heavily to earth. The next instant he was on his back, helpless, while the monster drew up and lowered the enormous horns to gore.
Then ensued the most amazing sight these eyes of mine have ever beheld. In a flash Philipson had dropped his rifle and dived forward, gripping the horns of the yak at their tips. I expected to see him instantly tossed high in the air, but this didn't happen. The yak paused, as if bewildered to find this weight drop suddenly from nowhere on to its horns. Then it seemed to me that the beast could not move. It pawed the earth restlessly with its hind hoofs, but the fore hoofs remained quite still, as did the monstrous head. You would have said some instantaneous catalepsy had turned the animal's forequarters to stone. I stood still, gazing, spellbound by the sight, and there, for a span of seconds that seemed hours, we were in a tableau: Poyning motionless and apparently stunned, the huge yak held by the horns, Philipson holding it, and staring between the brute's eyes with a look of tremendous, overpowering concentration.
It was a movement of Poyning's that brought me to myself. He rolled suddenly towards the rifle. I dashed in and snatched it up and had my cartridge in the chamber, when the yak gave a queer sort of whistling groan, swayed slowly to one side, and fell with a thud that made the earth jump under our feet. I fired at the same instant, but I know the brute was dead before my bullet struck. It lay still. Saunders Philipson was lying beside it, white as the snow on the peaks above us, a thin trickle of blood coming from his nostrils.
In an agony of alarm I dragged him aside and rested his head on my sheepskin coat. I was afraid at first his tremendous effort had ruptured some blood vessel and that he would be beyond the reach of my rough-and-ready attentions there in the wilderness. Poyning had now got his senses fully back, and together we felt Philipson's heart--which was beating weak and slow--and chafed his wrists and plied him with brandy from Poyning's flask; and after some time it seemed the life was flickering up in him again. The blood had dried quickly on his lip, and the faintest tinge of red was coming back into his face. In my travels at one time and another I've seen a good deal of woundings and miscellaneous injuries to the human frame, yet I couldn't put down Philipson's unconsciousness to any definite physical hurt. Rather he seemed to me to display the sort of symptoms you might expect from a man in an absolute nervous prostration.
At last, to our unspeakable relief, he stirred, sat up, and stared round him.
'Eh? Oh, yes, I remember,' he muttered. 'The yak-herd.'
Poyning was on his knees beside him. 'Philipson,' he said hoarsely, 'you pulled me out of that at your own life's risk. I shall not forget it. How do you feel now?'
Philipson was struggling to his feet. 'It is nothing,' he said quietly. 'You would have done as much for either of us. But we really must be more careful in future. It was--' he glanced at the dead yak--'as much as I could do to hold that beast.'
'Good God, man,' I cried, 'it was amazing! Six ordinary men couldn't have held it!'
Philipson gave me a queer enigmatic smile. 'Be just, Mirlees,' he said. 'Give the yak his due. See here.' He stooped over the great beast and pulled the clotted hair aside from its breast. 'If the brute had not received this injury I am much afraid he would have thrown me half way along the pass.'
'But your hands!' exclaimed Poyning, pointing to Philipson's bruised and blackened fingers and the blood that had oozed out from under every one of his ten nails. 'You must have put tremendous force into it! You must have the muscles of a Hercules!'
Philipson's answer was to pull up his sleeves, revealing arms that were muscular and shapely, but a good deal smaller than those of many a professional athlete. 'If it were a question of muscle,' he said, 'even a badly hit yak would be too much for the hero you mention. But the good gods have given us other powers. I used mine to-day. Let us be thankful that I had them to use. Now for re-assembling the camp.'
We recovered the stampeded ponies, helped by Ah Sing and Lo Eng, who had been far in the rear at the time of the brush, leading one of the baggage animals that had gone lame and could carry no load. One by one we got the lot, but the bearers were harder to collect. I noticed a couple of them skulking shamefast in the middle distance, and thought at first they were watching me; then I saw it was Philipson they were looking at, with eyes of awe and fear. When at last they had gathered into a sulky knot, Philipson summoned them to approach. They hesitated, then, obviously in spite of themselves, slunk up to our leader, who addressed them in their own dialect. I didn't know enough of this to follow his words closely, but there was no mistaking the gist. The hillmen were manifestly ill at ease. They shifted their weight from one foot to the other. Under the swarthy skin and life-long dirt of their faces a paleness became apparent. With a miserable cry one of them dropped to his knees, head to earth, and the rest followed suit, groaning and whining. Still the level, hard voice of Saunders Philipson kept on. It was like some long, blighting curse to listen to. He pointed to the yak, apparently drawing a parallel from its fate, and at last strode up to the grovelling hillmen, stretching his blood-crusted hands over their heads and raising his voice to a startling, terrible shout. At this moment I happened to glance at Poyning. I may have been mistaken, but I thought he trembled. Then I noticed I was trembling a little myself.
Philipson ceased, motioning the bearers back to their work, and they scuttled off, clearly relieved to find themselves still alive.
'Those fellows will behave better in future,' said our leader, turning to us. 'They know now that the next man to fail in his duty dies. I have also taken the precaution of making them understand that I am bullet-proof, in case one of them should be tempted to seek revenge with a gun.'
We halted while the bearers cut up the slain yak and prepared the meat for transport. Ah Sing and Lo Eng were superintending the work, in their capacity of non-commissioned officers, and I heard them haranguing the bearers in a style the very reverse of sympathetic. They had learned how the hillmen deserted in the hour of danger, and I anticipated that for the next few days those bearers would have a thin time of it. But when Ah Sing came to me a few minutes afterwards, there wasn't much of the bullying ganger about him. Instead, he looked strangely uncomfortable.
'My no likum dis, Misser Mirlee,' he said, shaking his head. 'My long time sabbee master him plenty stlong. Jus' now my tinkee him too muchee stlong.'
'What gives you that impression, Ah Sing?' I said.
His voice took on a tone of awe. 'Jus' now my look-see dat piecee yakkum,' he said, with his hand held edgewise to his own poll. 'Him neckee bloke-um hab got!'
Deeper and deeper we plunged into the mountain fastnesses. It was clear from the temperature our cooking water boiled at that we had risen to a great altitude, and Poyning and I were already troubled with height-sickness. Philipson concocted from his medicine chest a tonic that quickly reduced the fever, but we still had great difficulty in getting our breath in the rarefied air, and there was worse to come, for our route lay far higher yet. Moreover, to advance had become a matter of the utmost hardship. Whereas on the lower levels we had climbed under clear skies, now the heavens were frequently clouded over black from horizon to horizon, bringing fierce squalls of snow or hail, and a biting wind was in our teeth all day, though calming down usually at nightfall. Philipson was working towards the obo very much as if it were a point in the ocean and he a mariner steering a course to it; he used his maps as a chart and checked our position by observations whenever the sky cleared. The lie of the land necessitated constant changes of direction, and sometimes we had even to deviate from Philipson's former route, which, it will be remembered, he had followed on foot; but never would our leader consent to leave the course laid down on his maps unless it was physically impossible to get the ponies along it. As it was, our journey took us up and down steeps which rise in my mind to this hour like a ghastly dream--one of those nightmares when you imagine yourself to be clinging fly-like to a vertical wall at dizzy heights. But for the energy and skill and implacable resolve of Saunders Philipson I am perfectly certain we should never have got through at all, and even he couldn't prevent the ponies from succumbing one by one to the tremendous work on scant fodder. Also, two of the tagliks lost their lives in one day, slipping under their load and falling down a deep ravine.
Worst of all, the obo hadn't appeared, although by Philipson's calculations we should have found it by now. Philipson kept up a dogged confidence, but I could see that even he was getting uneasy. He decided, before casting around, to push straight ahead for one more day's march. This we did, and it was our worst day yet. Two ponies dropped dead, and two of the remaining bearers disappeared--where, we never discovered, though it is likely they lay down to the drowsy rest from which there is no awakening, and were quietly left by their own fellows. At last Philipson, who was on foot ahead, halted with a great cry.
'This is the pass,' he shouted. 'The obo is at the top end of it.'
But when we came to the place it was five or six feet deep in drifts, and nobody short of a diviner could have said whether the obo was there or not. It was too late to investigate now: dark was coming on. We retreated down the rugged slope and pitched camp.
That night our thermometer went down to five degrees below zero, but the morning rose clear, with the warmest sun we had known for a week past. The whole party set to work digging, with any tool that came to hand, but it was to the sun we owed our discovery. Brisk runnels of water began to tinkle away down the slope, the face of the snow sagged and caved, until there appeared, fully thirty yards from the scene of our blind efforts, a curious green blotch against the white. Philipson ploughed through the soggy mess towards it with a whoop of exultation, and a moment later the three of us were dancing round the obo, cheering like schoolboys. There was no doubt about it being the one we sought: you could see plainly the zigzag scratches where Philipson had scraped off the dead man's message.
We were now in a regular fury to be gone. Perhaps not two days off was the end of our quest, the rim of that mysterious depression we had come so far to find. Philipson at once laid out his compass and set a course due west; but at that moment I observed a strange commotion among the bearers. They were gathered in a group at some distance from where we stood, and I saw one of them point to the sky with an expression of downright terror. Excited as I was, I half expected to see one of the monstrous birds of the legend flap out over the peak surrounding us, but it wasn't that. It was a black cloud, no bigger than the cloud of holy writ, but curiously distinct from anything I had ever seen before. It was expanding swiftly under our eyes, and looked, on a gigantic scale, exactly like a big blob of ink that has fallen on to a blotter. But the really astonishing thing about it was the speed with which it was approaching.
'Great Scott!' gasped Poyning. 'It's coming up as fast as a train!'
If I hadn't seen this type of cloud before, Philipson evidently had, and recognised it for something dangerous. He instantly ordered the tents, which had just been taken down, to be opened out and erected again length-wise--one wall of canvas five or six-fold and about six yards long. Every rope and peg we possessed we used to secure this one shelter, and concentrated our whole camp under the lee of it. These preparations were rushed through, but none too soon. With a shriek the storm was upon us, first a terrific blast of wind, then a withering burst of hail, then thunder; and after a while, when the very snow was scoured off the barren steeps by the force of the tempest, blinding clouds of sand and grit that stung the skin like spirts of flame. It was a brand of storm, as I say, new to my acquaintance, and even in the rush and howl of it all I couldn't help noticing with astonishment that although the thunder crashed like the splitting asunder of mountains, we saw from first to last no sign of lightning.
We crouched under the barrier, European and native alike, and I wasn't long in seeing the point of lumping all our canvas together. Any one tent by itself would have gone whirling on the wings of the storm, but this reinforced wall, though the canvas bulged as if it would split and the poles bent like reeds in a current, held; and after withstanding its first fury, gathered strength from the storm itself. Snow and sand banked up against it, forming a drift some seven feet high, behind which, so long as the wind kept to the one quarter, we could laugh at it.
The storm didn't rise. Nor did it abate. When once the thunder had passed, which was about an hour after the first squall, the wind settled down to blow steadily, gale-strong, through the night. And that was a night of horror. By what I judge to have been ten o'clock we were as near frozen to death as men can be and still live, for the canvas wall, though a capital bulwark against the wind, was of little efficacy against the cold. Our thickest blankets might have been summer muslins. Then once more we had reason to bless Philipson's uncanny foresight. He had insisted on adding the yak-hide to our gear, though I remember thinking at the time that it was folly to burden ourselves with a thing of such weight; now I knew that the foolishness had been mine. As soon as the storm burst we had given our one remaining pony the yak-hide for a rug. The poor beast whinnied pitifully when we took it off him, but it was his life or ours. Philipson, Poyning and myself got into the great woolly hide, turned inside out--it was ample to hold the three of us--and slept in fair warmth.
At last there came a little lightening of the dense gloom, which having reckoned to be daybreak, we rose to take stock of our situation. The pony was dead, as we knew he must be, frozen stiff and hard as iron. The Chinese servants and the bearers all appeared to have survived the night without frostbite; they had pooled their sheepskins and rolled themselves into one composite knot of humanity, which, in the circumstances, was about the wisest thing they could have done. The storm was still blowing great guns, and even by that mirky light we could see an alarming change in the face of the mountain; nothing but lumpy drifts everywhere, and every crevasse filled with treacherous, powdery snow. Worst and crowning disaster, our chronometer and watches were ruined. The all-penetrating dust which had been swirling in eddies and back-washes behind our shelter all night had not only filled our eyes and ears and mouths; it had got into every piece of clockwork we possessed. In future we should be reduced to guessing time from the sun, if visible, and our position in a land as unmapped as the ocean, by the roughest of dead-reckoning from distance travelled.
The wind fell about mid-day, letting down a brisk fall of snow for some three hours; then the sky cleared, and we were shown the full direness of our calamity. Advance or retreat was out of the question till the snow thinned, and we set about pitching a camp in the normal pattern--pulling down our canvas wall and resolving it into three tents. This kept us busy till dark. An atmosphere of utter dejection was everywhere, which even Philipson's dogged energy and inspiration couldn't lift. For myself, it was useless to deny I had ceased to believe we could win through. Our one great hope had failed us: we had been counting all along on "summer" weather, whatever the difficulties of the route; but this terrific blizzard proved that such reliance had been mere vain imagining. I could see Poyning was a prey to similar gloomy forebodings, and I knew from the look of the hillmen that if we got any more help from them it would only be because of their mortal terror of Saunders Philipson. The Chinese servants alone seemed to have no thought of retreat. They wore the fatalistic look of men reconciled to death, and content to humour their master's madness to the end.
That night there was again a terrific frost, but sheltered as we now were by a canvas wall on all sides, we felt it far less than before, and reckoned to make do with the yak-hide spread out mattress-wise underneath us. At last, however, the cold awakened me, and sitting up, I was a good deal startled to see that the flap of the tent was open. I crept to it and looked out. In a direct line, and no great distance away, was the bearers' tent; and it seemed to me that instant that a figure was disappearing through their door. This was disquieting. If the hillmen deserted--as I made little doubt they would if a chance presented--they would get no wages except by robbery. Could it be that the man I saw retreating into their tent had just visited ours, and left the flap unfastened in his hurry? I turned to rouse Philipson and report my suspicions. This was queerer still. Philipson's place on the yak-hide was empty.
Now thoroughly puzzled, I wrapped my sheepskin tight round me and stole out. I could see nothing, and heard nothing at first but muffled snores and the swish of the night wind. Then there seemed to mingle with these sounds a low mutter of talk, some way away. I crept towards the sound. As I drew near, pausing at every step to listen, the noise resolved itself into something strangely familiar, which yet for the life of me I couldn't place. I was now so close that I could hear the words. I stood racking my brains to remember where I had heard the like before. Then it came to me, in about as curious a way as you could imagine. I had been feverish all day; now my eyes played me a trick; I began seeing things. The scene was transformed. The shadowy snow-draped mountain side became the verandah of our inn at Nanking, and I was listening again while Philipson spoke in that strange tongue that had so baffled me. The vision faded, but parts of it stood clear. I was actually looking at Philipson now. I had stolen to a sharp bluff of rock and was peeping round the angle of it; and there, not twenty paces from me, assuredly was Saunders Philipson; beyond him, half hidden by his form, something tall and white. Then he himself was hidden in darkness, as was everything else, for a cloud crossed the moon. At the same instant there came a violent puff of wind. When the moon shone out again I could see columns of snow, tall and white, being whirled up on all sides.
I withdrew softly towards the tent, but before I reached it there were quick footsteps behind me. I swung round.
'What the devil are you doing here, Mirlees?' demanded Philipson.
'I woke and found the tent-flap open,' I said, 'and came out to see what was up. But what are you doing yourself?'
He pointed to the sky, where black clouds were gathering as the wind freshened. 'It sounded to me as if the storm was blowing up again,' he said. 'If it comes on like yesterday we shall have to get up and rearrange the tents.'
There was nothing to be said to this. It was a perfectly sound explanation. The only thing was, it was false. What Philipson's object could be in lying to me I couldn't fathom, though I lay awake pondering the mystery long after he was asleep; this much I knew, that for Saunders Philipson to depart from the truth, there would have to be some extremely potent cause. The wind continued to blow in gusts, but at last died down altogether, and I fell into a deep sleep myself.
When I woke, Philipson had already left the tent. I could hear him rapping out sharp orders to the bearers, and on going outside myself, I found him energetically superintending the work of striking camp. For the leader of an expedition in such dismal straits as ours he seemed in wonderful spirits. The hillmen were not so cheerful. They wore a look not only of despair but evident terror, and one glance was enough to tell me we were going to have trouble with them.
I bore a hand in getting the tents down, but suddenly there caught my eye something on the ground which held me stock-still, staring. It was a trail of footsteps in the snow, a double trail, as of someone going and coming; and it drew a straight line from the door of the bearers' tent to the very spot where I had stood last night when I peeped round the angle of rock. That vague form disappearing into the tent hadn't, then, been a trick played on me by my fevered eyes. Philipson had had another watcher.
We used our last sticks of fuel for a fire to cook breakfast, and when we had finished the meal, one of the bearers cringed up to Philipson and knelt down, beating his forehead on the ground. The man spoke, still with that curiously fixed expression of despair and fear that I had noticed on the faces of them all. Philipson heard him out, and dismissed the fellow with a quick word, whereupon he sprang up with alacrity and ran back to his fellows.
'You understand what the man said?' queried Philipson, turning to us.
'Not a word.'
'He voiced the unanimous desire of the gang to leave our service and go home. I told him they would be allowed to do so.'
The pair of us looked at him in surprise. 'Great Scott!' exclaimed Poyning. 'What on earth for?'
'Because,' replied Philipson, very positively, 'it was the one thing on this earth to do. I know that breed. I can stand the six of them in a row and shoot them here if I like, but neither I nor anybody else can make them follow us farther.'
'Yet you thought we should have no more trouble with them?'
'I did. At that time they feared me more than anything else in the world. Now a greater terror has arisen.'
'Why, what's up with them?'
'They believe the mountains are haunted hereabouts. One of them got up in the night and saw a devil.'
I gave an involuntary start, and I am sure Philipson noticed it. I felt his eyes were keenly on me. 'Superstitious cattle, are they not, Mirlees?' he said. 'But one thing is absolutely certain: it is a waste of time trying to remove their superstition by argument. I shall pay them off and let them go.'
Poyning looked bewildered. 'How in Hades are we to get the gear along?' he said.
'Hump it ourselves. There will still be five of us to share it. Moreover, we can reduce the gear. We have not much farther to go.'
'What's told you that?'
The words were out before I realised I had said them. Philipson looked at me, and for one instant there seemed almost a shadow of suspicion, of defiance, in his eyes. But only for an instant. When he answered me, he might have been a city man mentioning the hour of a train.
